The Bodyguard ("Blaspheme" story #74)

BLASPHEME
by Michael Kroetch

The bodyguard is caught up in the task of retrieving his wire from the murky liquid. Doing so, he’s careful because he knows how easily it can be damaged when it’s not connected to him. And, although he’s hesitant to admit it, he also suspects some of the wire’s power may come from him. Certainly not as much as is so obviously the other way around. But some. Of course, he’d never ever openly admit such an outlandish idea. That would be a blaspheme from which there could be no recovery. If it were discovered he felt such a thing—all would, for him, without doubt, be over. Everything he’s worked for. In an instant. Gone! And that idea, even to consider, is too much. For him it would be as if some large steel instrument were to pluck out all his bones and leave him there. A puddle of leaky meat on the floor.

Thinking this makes his fingers begin shaking and his hands splashing so wildly in the dark muck that he can’t get hold of what he so terribly must. It makes him even more afraid and desperate to get the wire back where it belongs and always has—in his ear—which also has begun to glow red with a fierce ache from the object’s absence. As each second ticks past, he can feel the pain spreading from his ear throughout his head. Tick. Tick. Pressure is building up in there. Tick. Tick. He bites his lips trying to stop it. Tick. Tick. This ticking gets him wondering if his head might be sculpted out of one of the plastic substances his superiors showed during his indoctrination on explosives. Then, just for a moment, he believes this might be so.

The idea is odd—so odd that it stops him. He can’t believe what he let himself consider. And, in that instant, instead of fear, he’s overcome by laughter. It booms out and echoes back like he’s in a cathedral.